Prologue

Author's Note: Thanks for checking this out. This scenario plagued me for quite a while until I decided to write it out. If this is posted, then the story is either outlined with a deadline and planned ending or it is completely finished which means I decided I liked it enough to know I would finish it and was willing to post it. This will also be cross-posted to Wattpad and AO3. Even if this is just self-indulgence, I hope you enjoy my writing and my story.

If you are one of the readers on one of my other works, just know that I was in a five year hiatus from writing entirely. After reviewing the other published works, I'm working on recovering the outlines for each one so I can pick up where I left off. Keep an eye out for updates!

Overall Warnings: Graphic descriptions of injuries, borderline gore (or possibly gore, I might be too desensitized to realize it), some torture, and later graphic descriptions of sexual content. People, this is rated Explicit for a reason. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, there is a tag of Instincts!Kakashi on this fanfic. We're not hopping into the Omegaverse (so no, he does not have a knot and my OC is not going to be thirsty for it,) but this tag implies that the Hatakes were more related to dogs with pack mentality, possessiveness, and some primal sexual habits, including ruts. While most of the interactions between Kakashi and the OC will be healthy, there will be some themes, close calls, or misunderstandings that could trigger some readers relating to Instincts!Kakashi. I do not provide warnings in the form of story interruptions for graphic descriptions of violence, injury, or sexual encounters, those themes just apply to the entire fanfiction. If you think this may be triggering, please just don't read it. Instincts!Kakashi isn't for everyone and neither are some of the themes present. Check the extensive tags list if you have concerns about specifics.

Chapter Note: This is the prologue to the story or, essentially, the sneak peek into the most critical moment of the story in my opinion. This scene was the inspiration for the rest of the story to be written. Don't worry if you're confused, we'll catch up.

She could hear dripping against the cold, wet stone as she slowly opened her eyes. She had fallen unconscious again. Her arms were suspended above her head with chakra-binding shackles that were fixed low into the wall, forcing her to sit on the wet floor with her back to the wall. The position of her arms had already pushed her to the point of dislocating one of her shoulders when she had decided to attempt an escape shortly after her capture. Had that already been so long ago? She didn't even have the energy to shake her head to herself.

She had not seen daylight since being tossed into this dark cell. It had smooth, stone walls that seemed to fade into black nothingness in the corners where the light of the one candle in the room did not reach. There were no windows or furniture in the room. It was simply an empty room with plain walls and a single candle for her to look at, always flickering unevenly. There hadn't been any indicators of time in this cell with the exception of the candle. She had noticed it was consistently replaced as soon as the last of the wax had pooled into the plate beneath it and the flame was starting to die. This meant someone was always watching or they knew how long it took for a candle to melt and knew when to replace it.

She had started to time the candle from the time it was lit to the time it was replaced by keeping count of the seconds, minutes, and hours in her head. Once she determined the average consistency of each candle's duration, she started to just count the candles as they were replaced. She had a general idea of how much time had passed, at least from the time she had started to time the candles which could have already been a couple of days after her capture. However, the few times she was tortured to unconsciousness, lost consciousness due to lack of food, or passed out from exhaustion, she did lose count or didn't know if she had missed an entire candle or two. So far, she had counted up to two weeks' worth of candles so she knew she had been here longer than two weeks. She needed to get home, to warn them...

The dripping was starting to irritate her. She vaguely recalled that there had not been a leak in the cell prior to when she had been knocked out with a sharp blow to the head. She had refused to answer any questions since being imprisoned and would not betray her village for something as trivial as her life. She followed the source of the dripping and glanced to her right side. It sounded like it was right next to her. Her eyes widened from what little adrenaline she had left spiked in her veins at the amount of blood on the floor. The puddle had spread from right next to her, soaking into different areas of the floor where the stone was cracked. She could feel the wetness of the bottom of her pants where she was sitting in her own blood.

She had gotten used to the sensation of not feeling her arms since they had such extremely limited circulation from the moment she had been fixed into the shackles. However, she found herself completely unnerved to look at her mangled arm where deep gashes had streams of blood flowing slowly towards gravity. The drip was coming from her elbow where the slight angle was allowing the blood to drip to the floor. She could feel the sticky sensation of her clothes sticking to her skin in a patch running completely down the right side of her torso as well. She felt a familiar acidic burn crawling up her throat as her mouth watered from nausea and knowing what was to come.

Had he continued to torture her after she had lost consciousness? Was she drugged so she had no memory of the remainder of the torture session? Was she put under a genjutsu and tortured while she was unaware? Had she given away the information? 'I am seriously going to puke again...' she thought before doing just that. To her left was a bucket that was placed next to her after the first several days of vomiting on the floor. Her captor had determined that sitting in her own puke was just downright disgusting and made the process of interrogation that much harder.

Normally, this would be a great opportunity for further psychological torture, however, she would see the mess and empty the contents of her stomach again, making it impossible to answer questions as she hardly kept her eyes open and struggled to breathe before the process repeated. This was also around the time her captor had decided that she may have an infectious disease and ordered a "quarantine" placed on her until further notice.

After throwing up what meager portion she had been given a couple of hours prior (which was usually just a couple of large spoonfuls of bland and dry white rice), she groaned as her lower stomach cramped. She knew she would die of malnourishment if this kept up, as long as her captors didn't decide she was so useless they would get rid of her permanently. The very thought made her stomach turn again. She had just gotten everything she wanted in life, friends and family, and she was about to be ripped from it. The room became blurry and her eyes burned for a few moments. This was really it, wasn't it?

A noise outside of her cell caught her attention and she looked towards the door. It had sounded like scraping metal, not one of the nearby cell doors or the usual footsteps. This sounded... dangerous. If she weren't restrained, she would know who was behind the door. Or, at least, how much of a threat they were to her. The uncertainty put her on high alert. Would it pass? Would that door be opened? Was her interrogator returning for another session, this time bringing a new toy to test? She felt her legs shake just slightly.

She heard a short shout that was quickly cut off, followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor. Her eyes narrowed. "This is either a rescue or this is about to get very dangerous..." She waited patiently as she started to hear light, slow footsteps coming closer to her cell door. She saw a shadow of someone stop in front of her door. The adrenaline would normally have sharpened her senses to prepare for a possible fight, however her body couldn't gather enough energy to even keep her eyes focused. There was the sound of a key turning in the lock of the door.

As the door slowly opened, she felt her breath catch hard enough to disturb her broken ribs and she bit her lip at the predicament she was in, even if it was to help keep her from dropping her jaw in shock.

"Avurin Okita... a very interesting surprise to see you here and the dog not at your side," a deep voice that didn't match the man she saw in front of her interrupted her thoughts. She coughed slightly and gave him a small smirk, ignoring the throbbing of her jaw from where it had been grabbed several times during interrogations.

"Sasuke Uchiha. A pleasure to see you again. I'm assuming this isn't a big, happy reunion, is it?" she muttered, barely able to speak above a whisper through the pain in her throat. She coughed again, this time a bone deep, rattling cough that tugged on her dislocated shoulder again. She glanced at the man in front of him and noticed he had some friends tagging along. A boy with white hair, sharp teeth, and Zabuza's Executioner's Blade strapped to his back stood to Sasuke's right side. A girl with bright red hair, red eyes, glasses, with her nose turned up at the smell in the room stood to his left. Finally, a tall man with uneasy eyes and orange hair stood behind Sasuke, watching the interaction over Sasuke's shoulder. That man was wearing prisoner clothes.

"No. Again, you were an unexpected surprise. You can't stand in my way in your current state and I see no reason to kill you. The dog would have my ass if he ever discovered I had any role in your harm." Sasuke spat the last sentence with a mix of boredom with a hint of spite. "I'm actually here to give you an offer. I'll get you out of here and dump you somewhere for your dog to come retrieve you as long as Konoha agrees not to track my movements anymore. My mission is my business. There is only one man I want to kill. Anyone who stands in my way is forfeiting their lives and hindering my mission. If Konoha calls off its dogs, you are free to go." She openly glared at him.

"You know I can't promise anything. You've hurt enough people as one of Konoha's missing nin that they can't turn a blind eye to you anymore. I've also calculated that I've been here for over two weeks now, possibly three. I have no clue where you stand currently or what you've been doing. If you leave me here though, I will surely die soon. I've done nothing to stand in the way of your mission, including when you were a child. You know I'm not usually the type to beg, however I would like to live. Whether Konoha will agree or not is not my decision. Get me out of here and heal me though, and I will negotiate for you. That is the best I can do." After speaking for so long, her throat sounding more strained with each word and another cough building in her lungs, she turned towards the bucket and gagged, coughing up as much as she could.

She turned back to Sasuke and his group to see a small flash of... concern, that was definitely concern, flash through Sasuke's eyes. She didn't intentionally want to look pathetic in front of Kakashi's former student, but it was currently doing her an important favor. She closed her eyes for a moment to focus on breathing for a moment. When she opened them again, the girl with the red hair was staring at her, eyes wide and almost... panicked. Avurin gave her a questioning look but the girl averted her eyes, instead looking towards Sasuke with a shocked expression, begging to tell him something she didn't want Avurin to hear. He shook his head.

"Avurin, we're going to do this and you are staying with us until we get word from Konoha that our movements will not be tracked in the future. You will not leave our sight. You will be healed, however if Konoha refuses to agree, your life is forfeit. This will be a statement to Konoha and you are the hostage. Understood?" he asked. His bored tone was grating on her nerves but she understood the precarious situation she had found herself in. She nodded. Sasuke turned to his red-haired friend.

"Karin, we're going to get her out of the shackles and drop her arms. Stabilize her immediately after she's released so we can leave. She'll need your special ability just for her to be able to walk." With that, he drew his sword and walked towards her. Her heart raced as the shine of the sword caught the light of the candle. She heard a clang above her head and she fell over onto her side as the only support that was holding her up was released. The shackles broke into pieces and she knew her arms were most likely in bad positions. She still couldn't feel them.

"You're about to be in a lot of pain as the blood rushes back to your arms. I'll explain this later, but you need to bite me and absorb the chakra that flows to you. This won't fix much but it will give you enough for us to get you somewhere stable." Karin held her arm to Avurin's mouth, the sleeve drawn back and a look of apprehension on her face. She leaned down to Avurin to whisper. "There is something extremely important that you need to know. I won't tell you now but we do need to get you somewhere safe for a while. I'll handle Sasuke. For now, just get this over with so we can get you out of here."

Avurin groaned but nodded. Her fingers were starting to tingle. Not the mild tingling from an arm that fell asleep for a couple of minutes, no, this was intensifying and felt like she was being poked with needles to the bone. She looked at the arm held in front of her and used what little energy she had to lean forward and bite down enough to draw blood. A rush of chakra almost overwhelmed her and her heart started to beat faster. She let go after only a moment and took a moment to process the information she was feeling after not having access to chakra for so long. Sharp pains climbed from her hands up her forearms. She couldn't see the color of her hands with just the light of the candle, but she was willing to bet they were white from being above her head for so long.

Karin apparently had a roll of bandages on her and she had started wrapping Avurin's mangled arm while she was still laying down and recovering. Avurin looked up at Sasuke, observing him. She hadn't seen him in years and he'd definitely grown. She gave him a small smirk. Yet, he was still a self-absorbed asshole, she could see it in the way his little posse looked at him for every comment and the forced casual behavior. Yet, he was saving her right now. He still had a heart. He lifted an eyebrow at her then scoffed and turned around to walk out of the cell door. The other men followed him as Karin started to help her onto her feet. She could barely keep her balance and had to lean on Karin.

"Where are we anyway?" she eventually asked. Karin glanced at her, looking confused by the question.

"What do you mean? You don't know what this place is?"

"No. I was unconscious when I was brought in and my interrogator never identified himself. Just kept asking questions about the inner workings of Konoha." Karin frowned at this and looked towards Sasuke's back as they followed him through the torch-lit hallways of what looked like an extremely elaborate bunker.

"This is one of Orochimaru's hideouts. One that specializes in human experimentation." That simple statement made Avurin think back to every interrogation with an ice cold feeling running through her veins. Had they been experimenting on her while she was unconscious? The nausea was building up in her throat again. She pitched herself away from Karin to lean against the wall of the hallway, retching against the wall with nothing but acid hitting the floor. She heard the footsteps of the group stop while Karin walked towards her. She felt two hands grab her to turn her around, forcing her to look into the red eyes in front of her. Something in Karin's eyes told her that there was something going on and Karin knew exactly what it was.

"Look, if he did anything to you, I'll be able to fix it. For now, we need to focus and get out of here." With that, Karin grabbed her by the non-injured arm and started dragging her towards the exit, leaving the men to follow. She had more energy yet she almost felt sicker than before. What had they done to her while she was here? She didn't notice her vision tunneling until her face was about to meet the floor. Everything went dark.